I don't really know how to begin this post except in chronological order. Saturday's game was rained out due to the monsoon that passed through our beautiful state. Depending on where a person lives, determined the amount of rain. We lost power for 6 hours, which didn't really bother me, although the smoke detector wired to the electrical circuit beeped all night.
While we tried to sleep with the beeps in the background, Buddy was awake in his dorm listening to the floor party late in the night past midnight. Around 1 am, he heard the student in the next room give off an odd scream. Bothered (don't disrupt this guy's sleep), he walked to his neighbor's room and found him on his back, passed out and vomiting. He was choking on his vomit. Knowing the seriousness of this, Buddy did his best to revive him and had to hit him hard (ouch..he does have a bruise). He dragged him to the bathroom and got him to drink water where he proceeded to throw up for the next 30 minutes. Confident that the alcohol was out of the kid's system, he brought him back to his room. According to the drunken mess, he swallowed 14 shots of liquor then returned to his room. Yikes! My take on this is that he wanted to get stinking drunk with this amount of alcohol in his system. In the days when I would "party" a bit, taking more than 1 shot was unheard of...first, I was a light weight and would fall down with this. Second, the effects that you would have the next day made that shot seem really stupid.
Ok, so our Buddy saved a kid's life. This was done on behalf of his grade school best friend who died this past summer after ingesting too much liquor. It was a little bittersweet that he could save the life of a student that he did not know yet could not help his own friend. Lessons to be learned here. ..lots of them....we are not invincible.
On to the double header....the forecast was cold and windy....and yes, it was.....
We arrived in time for game one at 11 am. It was a good game, where Buddy's team won by a run. Yeah team. He did not get into the game, so we figured that we would see him in game two. After all, this was a conference series and his earned run average was the lowest on the team.
Game two started around 2:15pm. We were bundled in our foul weather gear anticipating at least a cameo appearance by the big kid...after all, why else would we sit in an empty stadium with wind gusts up to 50 mph and a chill factor in the 30's? For Buddy...that's why!
Game two was a DISASTER! As I mentioned at the beginning of the season, the team's talent is somewhere in the middle...not the best...not the worst....Well, the worst emerged with a vengeance....By the third inning, our team was down, 8-1....by the 6th inning, then team was down 13-2....by the 8th inning...the team was down 14-3....we lost count...the opposing team was hitting baseballs like they were tennis balls. The home team looked and acted like the Bad News Bears, except they were not the finely tuned machine like at the end of the movie...they were the team that Coach Buttermaker found in his drunken state at the beginning of the movie sans Tatum O'Neill....
It was cold, windy, long and miserable. By the middle of the 8th after trotting out the entire bullpen except for Buddy, Tink and I made the executive decision to leave the ball park and run an errand. Even his dad turned the radio off because he could not stand to listen to it....We doubted greatly that he was going to enter this wild game, so we left. After the game ended, we picked up the big kid and took him to dinner.
He was in a very "salty" mood as we sat at our table waiting for the burgers and chili (only after a loss....with a win, there are salads....). As we reviewed the game, he said something about the errors that occurred while he was in during the 9th. What? You were in the game? Huh? I waited in the cold wind for 8 hours to see him play and when I left, he got into the game! What!!! My face has wind burn...my bottom has the grates of the seat embossed into it....what!
With that said, the coach said to him...please make this stop....go in and finish them off. Before Buddy entered the game, it was like Little Big Horn and General Custer...all of the team's General Custers had been eliminated...one by one...until our Buddy entered. Batter 1...hit a ball directly to third base...the third baseman dropped the ball...picked it up and threw it over the first baseman's head....batter safe...same thing with the next 2 batters...bases loaded (oy...best that I did not see it). In fact, the first 3 batters that he faced made it to base on errors....the game would have been over without the errors...undaunted and a bit angry, he took over and ended the game on three easy plays. No one scored...bloodshed over...Dr Buddy took care of the hemorrhage.
Today, the team has the day off to regroup.....I am going to work and try to purge the day from my mind. I love the sport...love my players...love the team...which is probably why watching the game yesterday was so painful. I felt their pain...their inability to get out of a funk...their frustration. We are all glad that it is over and look forward to Wednesday's game. Will I attend the game? Maybe....it's Tink's birthday, I will let her decide. Until then...got to go to work....have a great day...
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